Now
read this :Time taken to travel to and from work
at the beginning and end of each day should count as working time under the
law, according to the Europe’s highest court.
Recently, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that workers
without a fixed office should be able to charge for the time such journeys
last, whereas at present they are not allowed to do so.It could mean that
companies employing such workers as electricians, gas fitters, care workers and
sales reps could be in breach of EU working time regulations, if they chose to
abandon a regional office, for example.
The
ECJ said it was protecting the “health and safety” of workers according to the
European Union’s Working Time Directive. The ruling revolves around a legal
case in Spain involving Tyco, the security systems company.BBC legal
correspondent Clive Coleman said it could have a "huge
effect"."Employers may have to organize work schedules to ensure
workers' first and last appointments are close to their homes," he
added.The directive is designed to protect workers from exploitation by
employers, and it lays down regulations on matters such as how long employees
work, how many breaks they have, and how much holiday they are entitled to.One
of its main goals is to ensure that no employee in the EU is obliged to work
more than an average of 48 hours a week.
The
ruling came about because of an ongoing legal case in Spain involving a company
called Tyco, which installs security systems.The company shut its regional
offices down in 2011, resulting in employees traveling varying distances
before arriving at their first appointment.The court ruling said: "The
fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems
directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices
and not from the desire of the workers themselves."Requiring them to bear
the burden of their employer's choice would be contrary to the objective of
protecting the safety and health of workers pursued by the directive, which
includes the necessity of guaranteeing workers a minimum rest period."
"The
national minimum wage is a UK right, it is not a European right. There's no
European right to a national minimum wage.The ruling said: "The fact that
the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes
stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional
offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves."Requiring them
to bear the burden of their employer's choice would be contrary to the
objective of protecting the safety and health of workers pursued by the
directive, which includes the necessity of guaranteeing workers a minimum rest
period."
Elsewhere in US,
the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that workers who fill orders in Amazon.com
warehouses need not be paid for the time they spend going through security
checks to ensure they have not stolen any products.The court reversed a
lower-court ruling for the workers, who alleged they spent up to 25 minutes
waiting to go through security clearance at warehouses in Nevada.Justice
Clarence Thomas said federal law requires that workers be paid for activities
before and after their shifts only when the activities are “integral and
indispensable” to the job they are hired to perform.
The U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 9th Circuit had ruled for the workers, but other appeals courts
had interpreted the law the way the Supreme Court did.The class-action lawsuit
was filed against Integrity Staffing Solutions, a company that provides workers
for Amazon warehouses across the nation. The implications of the decision would
have been great had it gone the other way. There are more than a dozen
class-action lawsuits filed against Amazon and other companies that use
security checks at the end of shifts to make sure none of their inventory walks
out with the workers. A win would have opened the way for hundreds of millions
of dollars in compensation.
The court was
examining the Portal-to-Portal Act, which Congress passed in 1947 to exempt
companies from having to pay overtime for certain activities that take place
before and after a worker’s shift.In previous cases, the court has identified
activities that qualify as integral and indispensable to a worker’s duties. For
instance, it said the time battery-plant employees spend showering and changing
was compensable because of the toxic chemicals in the plant.
The court also held
that meatpacking workers should be paid for sharpening knives because dull
knives would make them less effective and affect the appearance of the
product.But the court noted Labour Department regulations that said employees
need not be paid for “checking in and out and waiting in line to do so,” among
other activities. Amazon said the allegations “were simply not true.”“Data
shows that employees typically walk through security with little or no wait,
and Amazon has a global process that is designed to ensure the time employees
spend waiting in security is less than 90 seconds,” spokeswoman said in a
statement.
The lawyer
representing the class of workers called is disappointing stating that an
employer is free to waste as much of workers’ time as it so desires by forcing
them to undergo time-consuming anti-theft screenings without compensation !
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
21st
Sept. 2015.
Biblio: Inputs taken from Washington Post and Independent.co.uk
